


1998

by petersnotkingyet



Series: The Only Good [2]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Horocrux Hunting, M/M, set in Deathly Hallows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-28 21:30:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16250174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petersnotkingyet/pseuds/petersnotkingyet
Summary: “Do you remember someone named Tom Riddle?” Harry asked.  Susan was silent for a moment, and Harry was sure they’d hit a dead end.  Then, after a long pause, she finally spoke.“He’s done something terrible, hasn’t he?” she asked.“Yes,” Harry said after sharing a brief look with Hermione.  “We’re trying to stop him.”After graduating from Hogwarts, Tom Riddle spent nearly five years in London.  Harry and Hermione aim to find out why.





	1998

The memory was one of Dumbledore’s.  If Harry had to guess at when it had taken place, he would say Tom Riddle’s final year at Hogwarts.  He was still young and handsome, and he made a striking figure alone in the owlery.  There were Christmas decorations on the castle, and Harry could see students carrying luggage out as they left for the holiday.

“Writing home, Tom?” Dumbledore asked, speaking softly in order to not startle the teenager.

“In a manner of speaking,” Riddle said without looking up from the address he was scrawling on the envelope.  He didn’t look annoyed for once.  His expression was fond, and he was careful not to crumple the letter.

“Someone dear to you?” Dumbledore asked.  The corners of Tom’s mouth twitched upward.

“Yes,” he agreed.  “Someone dear to me.”

Dumbledore glanced down at the letter, expecting to see the name of a girl.  Instead, printed in Riddle’s slanted script, was the name Edmund Pevensie above a London address.  Dumbledore felt a rush of sympathy for Tom for the first time in many years.  The seventeen year old saw him looking and covered the address with his hand as he gave the letter to his owl.

“Have a good evening, Tom,” Dumbledore said.  The memory was beginning to slip away.  “Enjoy your holiday.”

“You as well, Professor,” Riddle said, but he sounded very far away.

Harry came out of the memory gasping.  He scrambled for his quill and parchment without speaking to Hermione, repeating the address to himself so he wouldn’t forget it before he could write it down.  The name was unusual enough that it stayed in his head better.  _Edmund Pevensie._

“Who is that?” Hermione asked, peering over Harry’s shoulder at what he’d written.

“Someone Riddle knew when he was young,” Harry said.  “We need to go to London.”

The address brought them to a Muggle boarding school.  The name Hendon House was on the gates, and the buildings were historic.  There was no doubt the school had been there during Riddle’s time in London.

“Are you sure this is the right address?” Hermione asked as they walked up the path to the main office.

“No,” Harry said.  “But there aren’t any houses on this street, so this makes as much sense as anything.”

When they found the school’s secretary, Hermione told her that they were working on a family genealogy project and asked if she could give them any information on a former student named Edmund Pevensie.  The secretary disappeared into the basement and returned fifteen minutes later with photographs of two boys—Edmund and his brother—and a copy of two newspaper clippings.

“Edmund graduated from Hendon House in 1948,” the secretary said, sliding his picture to them across the desk.  The image was black and white, but it was fairly clear.  Edmund had dark hair, freckles, and a boyish smile.  He looked almost like a kinder version of young Riddle.  “This is his older brother Peter.  He graduated in 1945.”  There was little resemblance between the two boys.  Peter was broader than Edmund, and he had light hair and eyes.  Harry and Hermione noticed the year more than anything else though.  If Peter graduated in 1945, that made him about the same age as Riddle.  That could have been how Tom and Edmund met.

“And what’s this?” Hermione asked, reaching for the photocopy.  It had a news article and an obituary on the same sheet.

“There was a train accident,” the secretary said, “in 1949.  It was a horrible tragedy.  Most of the family was killed.”

The obituary listed the cemetery where the Pevensies had been buried.  Harry borrowed a pen copy it down, and he and Hermione set off for the cemetery, unsure what they’d find.  It took several minutes of walking the rows to find a cluster of graves all bearing the last name Pevensie and the year 1949.

“Someone’s been here,” Harry commented.  Each grave had a small handful of tulips on it.  Edmund’s grave was the only one with anything else.  A wreath of purple chrysanthemums and white lilies was propped against the stone, dusted with snow.

“’Frank, Helen, Peter, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie are survived by their daughter and sister, Susan Pevensie,’” Hermione recited from the obituary as they stood at the top of the row and looked down at the six graves.  “It must have been awful.  She was still so young, and she lost her family all at once.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed.  “Hermione, who’s the sixth grave?”

They walked to the end of the row together.  The stone had Susan’s name on it, but only her birth year.  “She’s still a Pevensie,” Hermione said.  “She never married.”

“She’s still alive,” Harry said.  “I think we should talk to her.”

“Harry, I don’t understand what we have to gain from that,” Hermione said.  “Riddle left London fifty years ago.  It’ll be a miracle is Susan Pevensie even remembers him.”

“He stayed here for nearly five years after he left Hogwarts,” Harry said.  “Don’t you think we should know why?  He spent his whole life wanting as far away from the orphanage as he could get, and then he spent five years working in Borgin and Burks across town.  There has to be a reason.”

“Okay,” Hermione relented.  “Let’s see if we can find Susan Pevensie.”

It was simpler than either of them expected.  They found her number in a phone book and used the area code to limit what part of the city she was in.  Then, they asked around until someone pointed them to an apartment complex.  Her name was listed on the building directory, and she buzzed them up without asking too many questions.

“Susan Pevensie?” Hermione asked when they knocked on her door.

“That’s right,” the old woman said.  Harry had done the math based on the date of birth listed on Susan’s grave.  She was 71 years old, but she had aged well.  Her hair was long and straight, and she had freckles like her youngest brother.

“Do you remember someone named Tom Riddle?” Harry asked.  Susan was silent for a moment, and Harry was sure they’d hit a dead end.  Then, after a long pause, she finally spoke.

“He’s done something terrible, hasn’t he?” she asked.

“Yes,” Harry said after sharing a brief look with Hermione.  “We’re trying to stop him.”

“You’d better come inside then,” Susan Pevensie said.

Susan’s apartment was mostly empty.  There was a tea cup next to her arm chair, and a bookmarked novel was sitting beside it.  There were a few pictures around the room, but none of them were recent.  Harry and Hermione recognized Edmund and Peter in several of the photos, a long with a younger girl who had to be Lucy.  Susan told them to sit on the couch and got two more cups of tea from the kitchen.

“So you knew Tom Riddle?” Harry asked once she’d retaken her seat.

“A little,” Susan said.  “He was a friend of my brother.”

“Your brother Edmund?” Harry said.

“Yes,” Susan said.  “They were very close.”

“Ms. Pevensie,” Harry said carefully, “we’re not here to judge your brother.  We just need to understand if we’re going to stop V-Tom.  Edmund and Tom were more than friends, weren’t they?”

“Yes,” Susan said quietly.  “My siblings and I… we knew Edmund saw boys.  We didn’t care about that, but Tom was so much older.  Edmund was only thirteen when they met, but nothing we said made any difference to him.  And Tom was always so… secretive.  He was very manipulative, but he could be sweet with Edmund.”

“And he…” Hermione said carefully.  “He left London after the accident?”

Susan nodded.

“Tom traveled a lot,” she said.  “I think it was for his work, but I was never precisely sure what he did.  He’d only been gone a day when…”  She swallowed hard.  “I wrote to him, but he wasn’t home to get the letters.  I’d have sent a telegram, but I didn’t know where he’d gone.  He missed the funeral.  I think that devastated him almost as badly as losing Edmund.”

“I’m so sorry,” Hermione said.  There was nothing else to say.

“When he was back in London, he came to see my brother immediately, but he found me boxing up Ed’s things instead,” Susan continued.  “I had to tell him twice before he really understood what had happened.  I tried to give him some things Edmund had saved that I thought he’d want Tom to have, but he wouldn’t take them.  He just got the directions to the cemetery and left.  I never saw him again.”

Harry was realizing quickly that Voldemort’s time in London wasn’t going to help them find the Horocruxes.  It was just a profoundly sad story that the old woman in front of him hadn’t been able to tell for a long time.  The silence between the three of them hung heavily over the room.

“Can I show you something?” Susan asked.

“Of course,” Harry agreed.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, slowly rising from her chair.

“It’s so sad,” Hermione whispered once Susan was in the next room.  “She’s been all alone for all these years.”

Harry could only nod.  A few moments later, Susan returned with a small box in one of her frail hands.  It looked like it could have been an old shoebox.

“This is the box I tried to give Tom,” she said, handing it to Harry.  “Edmund liked to hold onto things.”

Harry lifted the lid carefully.  The box contained the remnants of a six year long relationship that had been buried half a century ago.  A thick stack of well-worn letters was bound together neatly in one corner.  They were all addressed to Edmund in the spidery scrawl Harry recognized from Riddle’s diary.  There were other trinkets inside too.  A small ring Edmund must have outgrown.  Ticket stubs from movies and fairs and carnivals.  A neatly folded shirt that was precisely Slytherin’s shade of green.  Candy wrappers from Honeydukes.  Notes and doodles on scraps of frail, aged paper. 

It was the most human thing Harry had ever seen about Tom Riddle.

That was precisely why he knew none of the items could be Horocruxes.  Everything Voldemort locked part of his soul into after the age of sixteen had been a symbol of status.  The ring, the locket, the cup, the diadem, the snake.  They were all things that made him feel rich or powerful.  He had never returned to London.  Voldemort wanted to forget the weakness of loss.

“I know Tom’s interest in my brother was self-serving,” Susan said.  “We were sent to the countryside during the war, and something… unusual happened to us there.  I know Tom wanted information from Edmund.  He loved to be loved, and he got that from Ed.”  Susan paused, leaning forward to pull one of the notes from the box.  She unfolded it carefully, and Harry saw that it was a sketch of Edmund done in green ink.  “But I don’t think that’s all it was.”

“Thank you for speaking with us,” Harry said, replacing the lid on the box before handing it back to Susan.  She held it close to her chest. 

“The last day I saw him,” Susan said, “Tom told me Edmund was the only good in him.  I believe that.”

“We’ll stop him,” Hermione said.  “I promise.”

“Just take care of yourselves while you do it,” Susan said.  “I remember what it’s like to be a child carrying the fate of my people.”

She sent food with them when they left, and she didn’t ask questions when too much of it fit into Hermione’s purse.  “Be careful,” she said shakily as she held the door open for them.  Harry followed Hermione into the street. 

“It’s awful, isn’t it?” Hermione said.  “Do you think things would have been different if Edmund Pevensie hadn’t died?  It can’t be a coincidence that Tom Riddle became Voldemort as soon as he was killed.”

“He would have ended up the same either way,” Harry said.  He couldn’t let himself dwell on the tragedy of a boy who’d died fifty years ago.  “Riddle had already killed someone before he ever met Edmund.”

“You’re right,” Hermione agreed reluctantly, shivering as she looked for a place isolated enough for them to apperate.  “It’s just so sad.”

Harry pulled his coat tighter around himself.  Before they rounded the street corner, he glanced back at the apartment complex one last time.  In the dim light of her window, he could see Susan Pevensie still standing in the window, watching them disappear into the night.


End file.
